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Nov 3, 2018 at 11:00 PM

With a closely contested election coming, former President Obama has recently taken to trashing both President Trump and the Republicans in general. In a recent speech in Illinois, for example, he accused the Republicans of embracing “wild conspiracy theories, like those surrounding Benghazi.”

The Internet contains dozens of definitions of conspiracy theories, but one seems to match Obama’s accusation. It notes that the term is used by “political figures to enforce mindless conformity,” and “could also be used as an extremely useful tool for cover-ups.”

President Obama found that approach useful in dealing with a dilemma he faced as the election of 2012 approached. On one hand, most of the facts indicated that the attack on the Special Mission Compound that resulted in Ambassador Chris Stevens’s death was a planned terrorist attack.

Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf, president of Libya’s General National Congress said, “The way these perpetrators acted and moved, and their choosing the specific date for this so-called demonstration, this leaves us with no doubt that this was preplanned, predetermined.” Sen. John McCain added some detail, saying, “People don’t come to spontaneous demonstrations with mortars and RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades].”

On the other hand, Obama was running for reelection, and one of his campaign themes to highlight his success in the war on terrorism was, “Osama bin-Laden is dead, and al-Qaida is on the run.” Crediting a branch of al-Qaida with possibly planning the attack on Benghazi would not have been helpful at that time. A different explanation had to be found.

It turned out to be a short anti-Islamic film written and produced by Nakoula Nakoula and uploaded to YouTube in July 2012. It rapidly spread throughout the Islamic world and played a major role in the violent protests against the American Embassy in Cairo, Egypt. This became the administration’s official reason behind the attack in Benghazi, but there were problems from the start.

On the night of the attack, for example, Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, e-mailed her daughter, “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an al-Qaeda-like group.” Later that day, she told the Egyptian prime minister, “We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack — not a protest.”

Clinton blamed the constant changes on the “fog of war.” Such confusion is common in the early stages of most enemy attacks, but in this case, it appears to have been based on a strategy for the coming election.

When U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice was chosen to go on all of the major Sunday talk shows on Sept. 16 to lay out what happened at Benghazi, the explanation changed again. In each of the interviews, she used similar language. On Fox News Sunday, for example, she said, “The best information and the best assessment we have today is that in fact this was not a pre-planned, premeditated attack.” She went on to say that the action was “a consequence of the video.”

When questioned, she claimed to have simply read from talking points provided by the intelligence community. We know now, however, that those points were altered by the White House. References to al-Qaida’s role, for example, were eliminated. President Obama’s adviser, Benjamin Rhodes, sent out a message listing goals for Rice’s talks. One goal was “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”

The result was a Democrat strategy based on politics, not facts. The aftermath of the attack at Benghazi therefore became surrounded by a “wild conspiracy theory.” As we now know, however, it was orchestrated by Obama’s administration, not the Republicans.

Col. Theodore L. Gatchel (USMC, ret.), a monthly contributor, is a military historian and a professor emeritus of joint military operations. The views here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Marine Corps or the Department of Defense.

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